Script for Content Marketing Travel Company Assessment - Unit 2 - Assignment 5

 

From my research and presentation, I will go through the four best content marketing examples I found.

The first is this blog from Devour Barcelona Food Tours, it includes some basic information about Barcelona, and key aspects that people will be searching for before travelling. They also include a video of theirs in point 6, which is a great way for them to get people over to their YouTube channel also. They will actively get people coming to their blog looking for key information on Barcelona, and then be more interested in the food tours they offer. One key of content marketing is providing people with content that they’re looking for, to gain trust and get your name out there, the client is then much more likely to look at your service.

Similarly, is the blog from Take the Family. Which looks at key things to do, eat, places to stay etc in Barcelona for families. Again, this is something that someone might be searching for, is Barcelona family friendly and what could they actually do when they are there, they will have these questions before booking anything, so Take the Family could be their first port of call. The blog goes into a good amount of detail and would put parents mind at ease, talking about things that all children would like such as a chocolate workshop or the best place to get ice cream. As well as details that the parents would need to consider such as a family friendly hotel, general cost of the city and the best time of year to go. You can then directly from that blog make an enquiry about the cost of booking the holiday through Take the Family. So again, they have got the customer to their website by giving out some valuable information, gained the customers trust and interest and then given details on how to book through them.

Third is the video from Expedia on Bora Bora, which shows some beautiful clips of Bora Bora, as well as the stunning huts that head straight into the sea. Similarly to the blogs, the video is a travel guide to Bora Bora and gives some key insights into things that you might want to know before booking a trip, such as where its located, a brief history and how to actually get there. The video is only 6 minutes long which is a good length for this kind of video, attention spans are generally getting shorter so if a video is too long people will likely not even click on the video. The video is also clever that it gets to about half way through, having given some key information into Bora Bora, before it mentions a resort that you can stay at through Expedia. The whole video has a small Expedia logo in the corner, it also has a link directly to the Expedia website to book a trip to Bora Bora directly through them in the description of the video. As well as this, it includes time stamps in the description for all of the places that it mentions within the video, making it easy to go back or see which resort you want to stay at. Its much more engaging and gives some key insight which you can then build on further through their website.

Finally, is the picture content. For this, Expedia are the better example. Their Instagram profile showcases incredible images of places that you can book through them. Most travel related Instagram accounts should only display images of beautiful places, this is why people follow them. They also include lots of hashtags specific to the image, actively try and engage users by adding questions to the caption, include a location of the image at the top so people can further review pictures of the location etc. It is a great way to get people engaged with places they might want to go. They don’t use links within their captions as they don’t link on Instagram, and have very few call to actions to their website. In my opinion, this actually works quite well for an Instagram account and a company of this size. Users of Instagram can easily go to Google and search for Expedia. The point of the Instagram account is to get their followers engaged with new travel locations, and attract them to these locations through beautiful images of them. In comparison, Thomas Cook make the mistake of only occasionally putting images of nice places, and otherwise including more infographic based posts, I understand their thought process behind this in terms of it being easier to give away key information which we have mentioned previously, however Instagram isn’t quite the right platform for this. They also regularly include links in their captions which simply won’t work, and you are much more likely to just search for Thomas cook and the location than type a whole hyperlink into your browser.

One set of content that I have not mentioned is Podcasts. While I think podcasts can be very useful for content marketing, it doesn’t seem to make the most sense for travel. As travel is so visual and based on where you want to go, I believe you would be much more likely to try and google questions and find blogs, or videos which are very engaging and exciting for a potential place. Or if you’re interested in travel, to follow Instagram travel accounts to give you new ideas. Whereas Podcasts may mainly be based around a persons travel experiences and tips, I certainly think they have a place, but only for avid travellers who will probably not use a travel company anyway.